Budget Pacing Controls let you manage how much a campaign can deliver and how quickly that delivery happens, using budgets, QPS, and frequency caps at both the advertiser and campaign level. Budgets now support multiple types in a single place, while QPS and frequency capping remain separate safety and exposure controls.
What the feature does
- Budget Pacing Controls provide:
- A unified Budget section that caps delivery by Impressions, Requests, or Spend at advertiser and campaign level.
- Separate QPS and Frequency Cap settings to manage incoming traffic volume and user exposure across all campaigns for an advertiser.
- Flexible pacing options so you can deliver evenly over time or as soon as possible until a limit is reached.
Where to find it
- Advertiser level: SSP Member Zone → Advertisers → Basic settings → Delivery section → Budget.
- Campaign level: Campaign Settings → Advanced settings → Delivery → Budget.
- In both places, you see the same fields: Type, Budget Amount, Pacing, Period, plus “Add Budget type” to configure multiple rows (e.g., an impressions budget and a spend budget in parallel).
Key concepts
- Budget Type:
- Impressions: Maximum number of impressions served.
- Requests: Maximum number of ad requests processed.
- Spend: Maximum monetary spend.
- Pacing:
- Evenly: Distributes delivery smoothly across the selected period; start and end dates are required when used with lifetime or month-like ranges.
- As soon as possible (ASAP): Delivers as quickly as possible until the budget is exhausted.
- Period:
- Supported at advertiser and campaign level (for example Hour and Day).
- Each period is enforced separately, such as 1,000 impressions per hour vs 100,000 impressions per day.
- QPS (Queries Per Second):
- Caps how many ad requests per second are processed for an advertiser.
- Protects campaigns from traffic spikes and lets you manage volume with a single advertiser-level limit.
- Frequency Cap:
- Limits how often a user (IDFA, IP, or other ID) can see an advertiser’s ads across campaigns within a time window (for example per day or per week).
- Prevents over‑exposure when multiple campaigns are running for the same advertiser.
Advertiser-level controls
Advertiser-level settings apply to all campaigns under that advertiser, unless you explicitly override them at the campaign level.
Advertiser-level QPS
Use advertiser-level QPS to control the maximum request rate across all campaigns for one advertiser.
- Go to Advertiser settings → Basic settings → Delivery.
- In the QPS section, set the allowed queries per second (for example, by impression ID such as IDFA).
- Save your changes.
All campaigns under this advertiser will share this QPS cap. Use this to avoid per‑campaign micro‑management while still protecting inventory and downstream systems.
Advertiser-level frequency capping
Use advertiser-level frequency caps to limit how often a user can see ads from the same advertiser across all of its campaigns.
- Go to Advertiser settings → Basic settings → Delivery.
- In the Frequency Cap section, choose the identifier (for example IDFA and/or IP).
- Set the maximum number of impressions and choose the time window (for example per day, per week).
- Save your changes.
The advertiser-level frequency cap applies across all campaigns for that advertiser; if a campaign-level cap is stricter, the stricter value wins.
Advertiser-level budgets
Use advertiser-level budgets to define global limits for the advertiser across all campaigns.
- Go to Advertiser settings → Basic settings → Budget.
- In Per Time period, choose the granularity you want to control (for example Hour, Day).
- Click Add Budget type and for each row:
- Select Type: Impressions, Requests, or Spend.
- Enter Budget Amount (for example 1,000).
- Choose Pacing: Evenly or As soon as possible.
- Choose Period (for example Hour or Day, plus Week where enabled).
- Save your changes.
All campaigns under this advertiser will respect these advertiser-level budgets unless you configure more specific budgets at campaign level.
Campaign-level controls
Campaign-level controls let you fine‑tune behavior for individual deals while still benefiting from advertiser-level safety rails.
Campaign-level budgets
Use campaign-level budgets to override or refine budgets for a specific campaign.
- Open the campaign and go to Advanced settings → Budget.
- Add one or more budget rows using the same fields as the advertiser level:
- Type (Impressions, Requests, Spend).
- Budget Amount.
- Pacing (Evenly or As soon as possible).
- Period (for example Hour, Day).
- Save the campaign.
Common use cases include testing different pacing strategies (for example advertiser-level Evenly, campaign-level ASAP) or applying tighter limits for sensitive or performance‑critical deals.
Campaign-level QPS and frequency capping
In addition to advertiser-level limits, you can also set QPS and Frequency Cap at the campaign level to fine‑tune control for individual campaigns.
Campaign-level QPS
- Limits the maximum queries per second that a single campaign can handle.
- Use it to manage delivery during high-traffic periods or test pacing strategies independently from the advertiser setting.
- The lower of the advertiser‑ or campaign‑level QPS values will apply.
Campaign-level Frequency Cap
- Restricts how often a user (by IDFA, IP, or other identifier) can see ads from that specific campaign.
- Ideal for managing exposure while running multiple campaigns under the same advertiser.
- The stricter cap—advertiser or campaign—will take effect.
To configure them:
- Go to Campaign settings → Advanced settings → Delivery.
- In the QPS and Frequency Cap sections, set the desired values.
- Save your changes.
Interaction between advertiser and campaign settings
- Advertiser-level budgets define global limits; campaign budgets sit underneath them.
- If both advertiser and campaign budgets exist for the same type and period, the platform enforces them together, and the effective delivery is constrained by whichever limit is reached first.
- Advertiser-level QPS and frequency caps always act as global safety controls and can be supplemented (but not bypassed) by stricter campaign-level caps if supported in your configuration.